1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a portable communication terminal such as a cellular phone equipped with a camera and, more particularly, to a portable communication terminal such as a cellular phone and a navigation method for a portable communication terminal, which enable a user to perform navigation by setting a destination on the basis of picture information taken by a camera, instead of setting the destination by using an address, a telephone number, or a map displayed on the cellular phone screen.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, a camera function is indispensable for a cellular phone. Most of cellular phones are equipped with a camera.
The technical progress of network assisted GPS (Global Positioning System) and the low power consumption in LSI are remarkable, and have contributed to small size, light weight, and low power consumption of a GPS signal processing circuit or the like. According to this, it has been observed that there is a trend of an increasing number of terminals, operators, and content providers which can provide services on the basis of location information obtained by equipping a cellular phone with a GPS.
As for the network assisted GPS is concerned, there is an MS (Mobile-Station)—Assisted system in which positioning information is inputted from a network at every positioning occasion. Moreover, there is an MS-Based system which can acquire assist information from the network at the initial positioning, and can subsequently operate in a continuous autonomous-positioning mode by its own terminal. The navigation function using a cellular phone becomes provided in full-scale as positioning technologies advance.
There is a technology disclosed relating to arranging a travel route and presenting it to a user's terminal from a server connected to the user's terminal via a network (For example, refer to JP2003-247840A).
However, in the system described in JP2003-247840A, it is necessary to set a location of the destination required when navigation is performed, either through inputting its address or telephone number, or by displaying it on a map downloaded from a map server.
Therefore, it is also necessary to have information of the destination beforehand in order to input an address or a telephone number. Even if with the information already known, it is still necessary to go through many steps such as selections in menus and key inputs in order to input these pieces of information through the cellular phone.
In particular, when setting a destination from the location on the map, it takes a lot of trouble only to find the destination. Besides it is necessary to download the map and thus, unnecessary costs associated with the download to users will be incurred.